But he was sent to the best place around for such a condition — Seton Medical Center in Daly City. The hospital recently earned top honors for its care of stroke patients.

It won the American Heart and American Stroke associations’ “Get With the Guidelines Stroke Gold Plus Performance Achievement Award.”

Seton garnered high marks for anticoagulation therapy and other measures that help patients survive a stroke.

“Seton Medical Center is to be commended for its commitment to implementing standards of care and protocols for treating stroke patients,” Lee Schwamm, chairman of the Get With the Guidelines National Steering Committee, said in a statement.

“Studies demonstrate that patients who are taught how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital reduce their risk of a second heart attack or stroke,” Amy Hanley, a nurse and stroke program coordinator at Seton, said in a statement. Risk factors include smoking, high cholesterol and obesity.

Guaraldi plans to take the lessons he learned from the nurses and doctors at Seton to heart. “I’m going to try to quit smoking,” he said. “That caused me this stupid problem.”

"There is a general recognition that we don't need these military-style weapons in New Zealand, so it's very easy to win cross-party support for this," said Mark Mitchell, who was defense minister in the previous, center-right government and who supports the ban initiated by the center-left-led Labour Party.